Can you believe that today, Honestly Helen is 7 years old And much as I’d like to take credit for it all, it takes a village to write a blog? When I was 7 years old I looked like this:
So needless to say when the blog is 37 here’s hoping it’s found it’s style and realised that that fringes are were never a good look on me.
I’m sure I’ve shared this story before but I started this job as a work project. Somewhere to log some ideas that could easily be shared among the people on the course. Once the course was finished I did nothing with it for years. Until I logged back in to my account to find a picture I needed and saw that people were actually reading it. I figured there might be something in this. So I started slowly writing about things I was interested in. One of my first posts was about how there was this dress in Next I was obsessed with and couldn’t find it anywhere. I’m talking real hard hitting journalism here, make no mistake.
But it slowly (and I mean very slowly) started to grow into the wine infused juggernaut you see today. But like anything, no man is an Island, it takes a village to raise a child etc etc and I don’t by any means do it alone. If anything I’m just the dolly bird who fronts it. So on my 7th birthday I wanted to a give a shout out to all the people behind the scenes who help me out:
Dave
Fair to say Dave is very much the silent partner in Honestly Helen and quite an important creative driving force. He’s my go to guy when it comes to bouncing ideas off and is pretty instrumental when it comes to creating all the pub tours and guides that we’ve done over the years. Not to mention he selflessly gives up his time to come with me to launch nights and restaurant reviews where he has to force down free food and drink. He deserves a Nobel prize of some sort really.
Ang & Emma
Speaking of people selflessly giving up their time to be dragged to events with me, in Ang and Emma I have my very own photography squad. I regularly take advantage of the amazing camera on Emma’s phone and both her and Ang have a great eye for what will make a good picture, moving random things out of the background, putting me in the right light and basically making me look as good as possible so I don’t have to think about it. They understand how unbelievably vain and self-absorbed I am and always have my back when it comes to me looking my best.
CJ
Cinnamon Jim’s role in my blog is twofold. Primarily he’s my little tech wizard who sometimes edits my pictures for me, lightening, darkening, editing out little background blemishes and even the odd eye bag or double chin when I ask him. But he also serves as my moral compass. On the odd occasion that I have asked him to remove the odd eyebag or an outbreak of adult acne on my chin he will say ‘is this honest, Helen?’ It’s these kinds of truth bombs that can make you go off a person #rollofeyes
Ruth
Speaking of ‘moral compasses’ by sister in law Ruth is definitely mine in terms of blog content, and in life in general really. She’s the person I go to when I think what I’m writing about is even the remotest bit controversial. Recent examples have been talking about the death of Michael Jackson or touching on the Black Lives Matter movement. She proof reads my posts and gives me honest feedback as to what she thinks could be misunderstood and likely to start an argument. She protects me from nasty people essentially.
Honourable mentions:
Carrie – for always being on hand to help me when I’m struggling with the right synonym to use. And being the only of my friends to have a blog post dedicated to her
Linda – For proof reading everything (when I remember to send them to her) and pointing out all my spelling and grammatical errors when I don’t. No surprises, she hasn’t proof read this one.
Mum, Dad & Steph – for always letting me talk about them, all the adventures we get up and letting me use pictures of them with very minimal objection.